ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — The Texas Rangers optioned slumping slugger Jake Burger to Triple-A Round Rock on Friday, at a time when the entire team is struggling to score runs.
The move was made before the Rangers’ 13-1 loss at home in the opener of a three-game series against AL West-leading Seattle.
Burger, a first baseman and one of the Rangers’ key offseason acquisitions, hit .190 with three home runs, 12 RBIs and a team-high 32 strikeouts in 100 at-bats his first 30 games.
“Getting back to the best version of himself. I think more than anything it’s a reset mentally,” said Chris Young, the team’s president of baseball operations. “Fair or unfair, his performance is magnified a little bit by the performance of others, the collective performance. We’re just not at the level we need to be.”
Texas selected the contract of first baseman Blaine Crim from Round Rock. Infielder Jonathan Ornelas was recalled from the Triple-A squad and infielder Nick Ahmed was designated for assignment to make room on the 40-man roster for Crim.
Crim went 0 for 3 with two strikeouts in his major league debut, batting eighth and playing first base. The 27-year-old, a 19th-round draft pick in 2019, hit .313 with seven homers and 25 RBIs in 28 games for Round Rock.
The Rangers have lost eight of their last 10 games. They have scored 29 runs in that stretch, but most of those came when they had a season-high 15 against Oakland on Tuesday. They scored only 14 runs in those other nine games, including a 2-0 win.
Texas is last in the American League with 104 runs scored. The latest loss dropped the Rangers to 16-17 overall, under .500 for the first time since losing to Boston in the season opener.
“There’s no hidden messages with these moves,” Young said. “We’re not going well offensively. This is simply we’re committed to winning, and the players that are performing are going to get playing time.”
Designated hitter Joc Pederson, a free agent last winter when he became the team’s other prominent offensive addition, was hitting .104 after going 0 for 3 Friday night. That is twice his season low of .052 after a recent 0-for-41 drought, the franchise’s longest hitless stretch since at least 1974.
The 29-year-old Burger was acquired from Miami in a trade during the winter meetings in December. He hit 29 homers and had 76 RBIs for the Marlins last season, after a combined 34 homers and 80 RBIs in 2023 when he was with the Chicago White Sox before a trade-deadline deal to Miami.
“We just think to get him in a situation where he can have a chance to reset, relax a little bit, find his swing,” manager Bruce Bochy said of the move. “He’s going to be back up here. He’s going to help us win a lot of games this year.”
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